


Echoed Words

by Jaetion



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Remix, Wasteland religion, alternative universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-18
Updated: 2017-08-18
Packaged: 2018-12-16 18:56:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11834952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jaetion/pseuds/Jaetion
Summary: The desert is a strange world, and even in the seemingly dead sands of the wastes, there are signs of life. A remix based on supergirrl's amazing Words series.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [supergirrl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/supergirrl/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Revenant](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7718344) by [supergirrl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/supergirrl/pseuds/supergirrl). 



> When I saw what my assignment was, I was so excited. I've been in love with Words since day 1 - it's a spectacular mix of Fury Road and AU. The mythology that supergirrl create fits in perfectly but also expands the world in new, exciting, and awesome (literally) ways. 
> 
> I hope you like this, supergirrl! <3

Angharad’s fall under the wheels was a nightmare. Worse than a nightmare, which would eventually dissipate like fog beneath the desert sun. Of all that things that Joe could do, taking Angharad was the worst - killing the sun, plunging Capable’s world into darkness.

At the back of the rig she had swallowed the dry, sandy night air and let the wind buff away the signs of her tears. After the initial shock, the initial horror, the initial panic subsided, Capable was left with nearly nothing left inside her. A chasm, that was all she was, with only an echo to bounce around.

The night was even darker in the desert. In their room in the Citadel, Joe had piped in light at all time. To see them shine, Corpus told them once, though they all knew the pretty words was gilt on the real reason: to keep an eye on them at all times. The blue blackness of the sky matched her wish for oblivion. She should have caught Angharad. She should have saved her. 

It was her fault she was dead.

_No, Capable. Never!_

“Angharad?” Capable gasped the name aloud. It had been as clear as a bell, Angharad’s voice ringing through her. 

What if she hadn’t died? What if she’d somehow found a way back to them? Glorious Angharad - of all the women, she would be the one who could defy the impossible. Capable said her name again, this time yelling it over the sand, “Angharad!”

She inhaled sharply and then held the breath in her lungs as she waited for a response. Wild, crazy, but that was their life. That was their world! Angharad, Angharad, stronger than any man. Brighter than any flame! 

But no, of course not. Reality was as cold and dark as the desert. There was no one running behind the rig and nothing coming to save them.

A noise.

Capable’s ear pricked at it and joy leapt up like a splash of water.

Angharad?

A whimper.

No, not Angharad, of course not. But still a mystery. Unafraid - what could harm her now that Angharad had been torn away? - Capable’s eyes quickly roamed through the back of the rig. She turned and her lips parted in surprise. A boy. A War Boy. The War Boy. Tucked underneath a tarp and huddled up as pale as the moon as it slipped through smoke.

“What are you doing here?”


	2. Chapter 2

He stuck as close to her as he could without getting in her way, his big boot stepping on her imprints in the sand and their shadows bleeding into each other. But not touch, even though she’d touched him. With Imperator Furiosa staring as unblinkingly as a skull at him him and the whole army of Many Mothers and their guns, older than even the immortal Joe, standing guard, there was no way he’d make any moves to set of their alarms. Not that he’d do anything even if he and Capable were alone. (Alone together, his brain got stuck on that idea, spinning circles around it. Never had he been alone, not with Slit and Boys and the whole of the Citadel as protection. Noise and voices and cries all the time; out here he could hear his heartbeat - surprisingly steady. And listening to it, it called to her like a car searching for its driver.) As the sun set and Capable’s crew ate together, he was content to hover a little ways away and watch her, stuffing his dried bar of whatever toward his mouth with his eyes clamped onto the chrome form of her.

_If you hurt her -_

“Won’t!” he promised immediately… to the wind? Nux snapped his head back and forth, hand going his pockets, remembering too late that he was unarmed. If someone snuck up while he was being mediocre…

But nothing felt like a threat. There was a feeling in the air, a crackle of energy like he’d felt in the sand storms, with grit and metal rubbing so hard against each other that they sparked. Nux glanced again at Capable - safe between the other Wives and Women - and then let his gaze move over the slopes of sand. Nothing, of course. Maybe. Hopefully. Slit and some of the other Boys had stories about the things that walked the desert: wretches who died Unwitnessed so they never got to Valhalla and had to wander in the wastes forever. Or monsters that survived from the before-times, huge and full of fury that they’d lost their territory. Or vengeful ghosts of all of those who’d been mowed down by Joe. Without the War Boys around, did this crew have enough protection?

He looked up at the moon, just as dead as the earth below it. Used to sort of freak him out - and having Slit hiss about the things on it that could fly down and pick off pups had never helped. But looking at it now, looking at the endless sky, Nux didn’t feel afraid. There were things in the desert, things that moved, things that hungered, but for once he thought about them being on his side. Or not his side, because he was just a driver without a car, but on Capable’s side. If anything could speak to the damned, it was her.

“Excuse me, Wife,” he said when one of them marched close to him. Toast, Capable had named her for him.

But in spite of that politeness, Toast glared up at him. “I’m not a Wife! I never married anyone!”

Nux held up his hands, showing they were empty and so he wasn’t looking for a fight. This not-Wife was the shortest of all of them but looked ready to battle, ready to prove herself. Quickly he tried to appease her, throwing frantic glances at the Imperator to make sure didn’t think he was overstepping his boundaries. “Sure. Um. So… you’re… “ he searched for a word. Not an imperator, not a Boy, not a wretched for fucking sure. “A free spirit.”

Capable came out too, laughing a little, though it didn’t sound all too happy. He heard her and turned toward her as quickly as obeying an order. When her fingers brushed against his arm he had to restrain a shiver of delight. “What did Miss Giddy say? Quo peregrinatur grex, pastor secum.” 

“Joe’s not my shepherd!”

“No, course not,” Capable soothed. She frowned a bit and Nux stared at her mouth. “Angharad was our shepherd.”

“She was the one leading us,” said one of the other not-Wives. Cheedo the Fragile looked just like her name. Nux thought she was still a pup, not ready for the trials of the desert. 

“I feel like…” Capable started, but then her voice drifted away like it’d be caught in a desert wind. The other women waited for her to rouse herself, and Nux too, waiting, staring, listening to her. “Some part of her is still with us.”

The most Splendid of the treasures, the one who fell. The one who died. Swamped again with shame and sorrow, Nux supplied, “She went gloriously to valhalla with the Immorta.”

The best, shiniest option for anyone. He meant it as a comfort, expecting them to agree with the honor of it, but again he said the wrong fucking thing and the Not-Wives shook their heads, swore, spat on the sand. He ducked his head and cursed his mediocrity, but then Capable’s hand reached out of her shawl. Longer than just a touch this time, she held on, held him, her palm on his bicep and fingers up to his shoulder.

“We’re not going to any place of his,” she told him. “He’ll never have Angharad.”

He’d seen Immortan Joe claim Angharad’s body, but Nux swallowed back that argument. 

“I’d rather wander,” Toast said firmly. “For all damn eternity.”

Nux thought he heard another noise, a throat clearing, not quite a cough. Out of the corner of his eye he saw his bloodbag shuffle closer to the War Rig.

Toast continued in the same determined voice, “At least then I’d get to see the world. No more locked up like an animal in a cage.”

“Not all who wander are lost.” The glowing white not-Wife’s pronouncement was enough to bring them all back together, anger burnt away. They rubbed each others shoulders, pressed kisses against cheeks, the tops of their shining heads. An interloper, Nux thought of himself, his rusted eyes witnessing something he should not. Quietly he backed up and then retreated to the rig, to its solid form, the one familiar thing in the strangeness of the wastes. He made a circle around it, boots sinking and sliding in the sand, and ducked under to check its parts, still functional in spite of its long ride on the Fury Road. 

If he had his tools… Nux cursed himself for the day before. His car and his tools, smashed up and buried. For the first time in his half-life, he doubted the wisdom of all those hard lessons he’d learned in the pits. Capable’s words were seared into his brain like she had wielded a brand: he had a manifest destiny that wasn’t dying for Immortan Joe. If that was true - which it was, of course, he believed and trusted and knew Capable was right, that she was the sun, that what she shared was more than he could ever steal or barter for back in the Citadel - if that was true, then the Imperators and their words were wrong. Then Joe was wrong. Then the War Boys were wrong. Then he’d been wrong, as well. 

And that he’d been a mediocre fool for wasting a car with all that guzzoline and nitro, and all the wrenches and pliers, and all that could have been done if he’d only known Capable sooner.

Nux fiddled with what he could, knocked the sand out of pipes, crawled through the engine and up through the belly of the rig, and then sat on the hood like an ornament to keep watch on the Many Mothers and Not-Wives. Strange things in the desert, he thought again from his perch. Women older than time. Waste-water that made sand into slime. Feathered-things. Too many things to name. Or even count. It made him feel untethered, the sand moving underfoot so he couldn’t gain purchase, too much chrome too soon, leaking out too much with no bloodbag to top him up. Unhooked. 

Lost.

_No, not lost._

Found.

Capable, shining and shiny, called to him and he followed her up to the back of the rig. He’d follow her anywhere, and he told that to her in a whisper, barely able to breath through the words of a pledge of fealty.

_No, not fealty._

Love.

With her lantern and her wraps and her soft hands, she made them a nest up at top of the war rig, a safe place to see the huge expanse of the world out ahead of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quo peregrinatur grex, pastor secum - Whither the flock may wander, let the pastor [wander] with them. A piece of Christian philosophy recited in A Canticle for Leibowitz, a dystopian novel that takes place in America after nuclear war.
> 
> Not all who wander are lost. - Wordburger: Lord of the Rings


	3. Chapter 3

She refused to think of it as a chase - the rig in front with Joe’s army behind them - maybe it was just semantics but Capable wouldn’t call it that. They were leading, just like Angharad had. She kept her eyes open to all of it - to the flames, the bullets, the blood - this time she would not be too slow, would not miss a chance to make a difference. No one else would fall. No one else would be left behind.

Fear and anger roiled and boiled her blood and her body sweated out water like it was gushing from the Citadel pipes. Capable saw Dag and Cheedo’s grasping touches and Toast’s twitching feet; when Nux moved down beside her, his sleek, firm body was a comfort that brought her an immediate relief. His skin was silk against her leg, the white paint smearing onto her like she was a War Boy, too.

No, she corrected herself, she was no part of Joe’s anonymous legion. She was a person. She was Capable.

_You are powerful!_

_You are not a thing!_

As if her sister were still with her, Capable heard Angharad’s strong voice. She felt it, too, a rumbling roar deep inside of her that braced her bones and bolstered her heart. 

She would never give up. None of them would. They would never surrender. 

And they would win.

The nightmare was over - Capable was awake now. And above the rig, the sun burned bright and splendid.


End file.
